Claudine Longet: Aspen's Femme Fatale

Claudine Longet left France in pursuit of the American dream. She found it as a chanteuse, actress and socialite. Then, in 1976, she was accused of killing her lover, the skiing legend Spider Sabich. But it was the outcome of her trial in the high-living haunt of Hunter S Thompson that really shocked the nation.

She found it as a chanteuse, actress and socialite. Then, in 1976, she was accused of killing her lover, the skiing legend Spider Sabich. But it was the outcome of her trial in the high-living haunt of Hunter S Thompson that really shocked the nation.

Just for a moment I assumed that the journalist sitting at his keyboard in the front office of the Aspen Times had to be joking. Exactly how many aspects of Claudine Longet's extraordinary life could have passed him by? Her performance as the female lead, opposite Peter Sellers, in Blake Edwards' 1968 film The Party? The mercilessly derisive song "Claudine", written about her by the Rolling Stones? Her close friendship with Bobby Kennedy, whose company she was in at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of his shooting, on 5 June 1968?

My American colleague must also have missed the 2010 memoir,

Aspen Terminus, based on her life. And the fact that, as that book's accomplished author, Fabrice Gaignault, observes, "Claudine Longet succeeded in doing what no French woman singer since Edith Piaf had done: selling [serious numbers of] records in the United States." Her major hits in America, predominantly cover versions of MOR classics, were achieved with the support of her former husband, and father of her three children, the late crooner Andy Williams.

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Ronald Reagan once called Williams' voice a "national treasure". (While I was in Aspen in August last year, Williams was in hospital, combating the terminal stages of cancer.) No such claims have ever been made for Longet, although there is a distinctive and oddly haunting quality to her breathy, girlish renditions of songs such as the Beatles' Here, There And Everywhere and

Good Day Sunshine.

Another thing you'd have assumed any Aspenite would be aware of was the moment, on 21 March 1976, when a .22 in Longet's hand discharged a single bullet from close range, killing her partner, champion skier Spider Sabich, in the luxury chalet they shared on the edge of town.

It's certainly acceptable - some might say desirable - for a female icon to radiate a sense of recklessness and danger. But in Longet's case, the events of that Sunday afternoon shifted the emphasis so firmly from femme to fatale that, even now, many have not forgiven her. "She is still widely detested in Aspen," one source told me.

Vladimir "Spider" Sabich had won the slalom at the World Cup in 1968 and the US championships in 1971 and 1972, but his huge popularity transcended the world of professional skiing. When he was killed, aged 31, the handsome Sabich was one of America's most widely venerated sporting heroes. He was the model for fellow Californian Robert Redford's character in Michael Ritchie's 1969 film Downhill Racer and endorsed a wide range of products, from cosmetics to coffee. His shooting remains the most incredible story that the Aspen Times has carried in the modern era, even if you include the 2005 suicide of the writer Hunter S Thompson in nearby Woody Creek: that last death, very sadly, was more predictable. Only a serious back injury sustained when he was approaching the peak of his career (fearlessness was perceived to be his greatest weakness) prevented Sabich from becoming one of the best-known American sporting legends of all time. Known for his charm, generosity and humour, the Californian effortlessly excelled in every area of life that most young American men openly aspired to, with the significant exception of monogamy.

It is a measure of the widespread revulsion that the Longet affair generated in the local community that Hunter S Thompson, not widely known as a moral arbiter, described the killing of Sabich as being like the town of Aspen fouling its own nest. It's a curious and rather alarming thought that, had the author of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas been successful in his 1970 campaign to become sheriff of Pitkin County, running on a manifesto that would have renamed Aspen "Fat City", he would have had the responsibility of overseeing the case against Longet.

But it wasn't her role in Sabich's violent death that secured Longet's unique place in the history of American justice, so much as her trial and subsequent punishment. Despite admitting that she was holding the gun when it killed Sabich in his bathroom, Longet, who said the weapon went off by accident, was charged not with homicide but with reckless manslaughter. She would eventually be sentenced to 30 days in Aspen's Pitkin County Jail, a term to commence on a date of her own choosing. Beforesentencing, her defence co-attorney Ronald Austin had reportedly said that he hoped Longet would escape with a fine.

One reliable Aspen source told me that, shortly after Sabich's death, an acquaintance had been obliged to help dissuade a third party from taking out a contract on Longet.

There are certain traumas so intense that they can permeate the DNA of a place or an institution, altering and defining the way it is perceived for decades to come, and affecting future generations whose awareness of the event may be vague or nonexistent. It might sound curious to compare the Longet shooting to the Munich air crash, and yet, just as that latter tragedy helped galvanise the ambition, world following and European focus of Manchester United, so the legacy of the Longet affair had significant and enduring consequences for Aspen. The case was crucial to the development of the Colorado town's now famous reputation as a place that polices itself - not by orthodox means, but through liberal, consensual tolerance, a policy mainly orchestrated by its world-famous, recently retired sheriff, Bob Braudis. As a young deputy back in 1977, Braudis had the job of taking Longet her breakfast in jail.

Sensationalist accounts of the trial reinforced Aspen's reputation as a drug-fuelled, amoral community (a perception already well established in America) to a global public. "Aspen," the Daily Mirror headline declared, after sentence was pronounced, "is the modern Sodom and Gomorrah." Longet, observed the News Of The World, following the verdict, "put Aspen on the world map as a town where anything could happen. People said

[slanderously, as the verdict would indicate] that you could even get away with murder there."

There are many unusual things about North America's most exclusive ski resort, whose idyllic setting has proved incrementally attractive to the wealthy elite. (Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Kevin Costner, Michelle Pfeiffer and many other international stars have homes here.) One of Aspen's distinctive attributes is that the statue of Lady Justice that stands at the front of the courthouse wears - unlike most equivalent figures elsewhere in America - no blindfold.

Justice stares in the face of every resident of Aspen: a constituency that still includes Claudine Longet. She lives on Red Mountain- an expensive area, even by the ski resort's own competitive standards - with her former defence attorney Austin.

The lawyer left his wife and two children to move in with his convicted client even before she had served her meagre jail term.

Some have suggested,falsely, that Longet, now 71, is a traumatised recluse. I saw her myself once a few years ago, a petite woman, shopping in the town's small food mall. Call her unlisted number today and the phone rings out. Longet is not, and never will be, available for interview.

The one time she has spoken to the press since the Sabich affair was for an A&E television documentary on Andy Williams, screened in 2003, and even then her contribution was restricted to commentary broadcast over still photographs.

Longet was born in Paris in 1942. Her father was an industrialist specialising in x-ray technology; her mother a doctor. Longet became a show dancer at 17. One evening in 1960, nightclub owner Lou Walters saw her on French television. He hired her to perform in revue at Las Vegas, where she would first catch Williams' eye.

French though she may have been, Longet swiftly came to epitomise a peculiarly American kind of wholesome chic, a status reinforced by her regular appearances on Andy Williams' hugely popular weekly television show, and especially by her contribution to his Christmas specials, during which she would radiate the apparently contradictory qualities of seductiveness and maternal pride, casting protective glances towards her spouse and their children as they braved fake snow or posed under the studio Christmas tree.

Few post-war entertainers in America have so swiftly completed the journey from nationaltreasure to convicted criminal and pariah.

Perhaps the closest comparison in the modern age is another occasional actor, profiled by Kenneth Tynan in his 1980 book Show People.

There are some stars, Tynan wrote, who are destined to be hugely celebrated in America, "but who will never achieve a global reputation. Such an individual," he declared, "is OJ Simpson."

Longet and Williams divorced in 1975, after a long separation, but their mutual affection endured until his death. In the words of their son Bobby (named after his parents' skiing companion Robert F Kennedy), "They had a great relationship. [As a child in Aspen] I said, 'Boy, I'm glad my parents aren't divorced.' And they were."

Even after their estrangement in or around 1972, she continued to appear on The Andy Williams Christmas Show.

Footage survives from the Grammy Awards ceremony of March 1975, in which the host, Longet's (already separated) husband introduces the nomination for best song. At Williams' side are Paul Simon and John Lennon, the latter of whom appears to be in the condition that F Scott Fitzgerald used to call "pleasantly jingled". "Hallo," Lennon says. "I'm John. I used to play with my partner Paul." Simon addresses the audience. "Hallo," he says. "I'm Paul. I used to play with my partner Art." "Hallo," Williams announces, "I'm Andy." And then - to laughter - "I used to play with my partner Claudine."

A year later, Williams would be flying up to Aspen, an expression of mortification having replaced the beatific smile and almost impossible degree of contentment he radiated when duetting with Bing Crosby, Johnny Cash, Judy Garland and others on his television show. He was hoping, he said, to comfort his three young children, who were all in or around the chalet when Longet discharged the single shot that killed Sabich. "Their music," Williams tells the audience at the Grammy ceremony, indicating Lennon and Simon, "helped to tell the story of me and my partner." "Any particular songs, Andy?" Lennon asks, with an indifference verging on scorn. "It started with I Want To Hold Your Hand," Williams tells him, "and finished with Bridge Over Troubled Water." "Touching, touching," Lennon mutters, sarcastically. "Shall we get on with this?"

It's hard, watching that scene now, to prevent yourself pondering other tunes that in some way echo Longet's life-altering mistake. The Beatles' Happiness Is A Warm Gun, possibly, or Maxwell's Silver Hammer. The Rolling Stones'

Claudine lay unreleased for years, apparently for legal reasons, relating to its (inaccurate) implication that two shots were fired, and its refrain of "Claudine's back in jail again". The track appears on the reissue of Some Girls. ("Now only Spider knows for sure," one verse begins, "But he ain't talkin' about it any more/ Is he, Claudine?/ There's blood in the chalet/

And blood in the snow/ [She] Washed her hands of the whole damn show/ The best thing you could do, Claudine.")

One episode of Saturday Night Live, from 24 April 1976, featured a sketch called "The Claudine Longet Invitational" in which male skiers competed in a slalom competition, at the end of which they were "accidentally" shot by Longet. Threatened with legal action, the producers issued a public apology.

There are differing accounts of how Claudine Longet first met Andy Williams. The couple used to enjoy relating a highly romantic story that involved her car breaking down on the Strip in Las Vegas, and Williams, who happened to be passing, rescuing her in his limousine. (The crooner also claimed that he had a memory of seeing Longet roller-skating near the Louvre when she was eight years old.) It seems most likely that they first met while she was dancing at Vegas' Tropicana casino in 1960. They married in Los Angeles in December the following year and had three children, Noelle, Christian and Bobby, who would be 12, ten and six respectively on the day of the Sabich shooting. "Unlike most girls, who liked to unwind after the midnight show," Longet once told a reporter, "I went straight back to my apartment, to wake up in good shape to go skiing. I fell in love with Andy through sport."

Just before she split up with Williams, she told another interviewer, "I'm a lucky woman: I have a husband, three beautiful children, and also a man that I love... don't ask me to tell you his name."

Longet had met Sabich at a skiing event in California in 1972.

By the time she moved into his Aspen chalet in the exclusive Starwood complex, close to the house of his friend, the singer John Denver, the former American champion was struggling to regain full fitness. Whether he would have ever overcome his back problem and eclipsed his rival, Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy, we will never know.

In the late afternoon of 21 March 1976, patrol officer William Baldridge was called to Sabich's chalet in a gated community overseen by private security guards. The skier's body was slumped on the floor of the bathroom. Doctors at Aspen hospital pronounced him dead on arrival. Back at the chalet, officers found a .22 pistol and ammunition. They confiscated papers including Longet's personal diary. This 225-page journal was described by those who read it as "explosive" in terms of what it revealed about the couple's intimate and reputedly turbulent relationship. (Longet would subsequently concede that she and Sabich had been thinking of relocating to separate addresses.) Sabich's coach and best friend, Bob Beattie, who was with him an hour before he died, confirms that Sabich said his relationship with Longet was about to end.

Anecdotally, she was less than appreciative of the nature of his relationships witother women.

Marty, Sabich's ex-girlfriend who would go on to marry his brother, Steve, recalled how, shortly before his death, Sabich had taken her out to dinner in Aspen and "told me he could not get rid of Claudine, and that she was throwing tantrums".

Once in custody, Longet allegedly articulated in the presence of a female officer the words, "I killed him." This supposed statement was ruled inadmissible because no attorney had been present.

Longet's daughter, Noelle, stated in a deposition that her younger brothers were sledging at the time of the incident. She said that she heard Sabich shout, "Claudine! Claudine!" then found her mother calling 911.

Sabich's corpse had a single small wound in his abdomen, just below the ribcage. The bullet had traversed his stomach and pancreas.He was buried near his childhood home in Kyburz, close to Lake Tahoe, California, where his father, Vladimir Sr, who had been a distinguished fighter pilot in WWII, was a highway patrol officer. His mother, Frances, ran the local post office. Longet astonished many observers when, six days after the skier's death, she showed up at an outdoor memorial service in Aspen. Pictures survive of her standing in the front row of mourners, holding a flower. Released on a $5,000 bond, she headed for Palm Springs.

Readers who are not in possession of an American law degree might be forgiven for asking themselves certain questions, such as: how in God's name did this happen? Surely Longet, if innocent, should have walked free, whereas, were she guilty of manslaughter, the penalty might have been expected to be substantial.Especially since, according to the testimony of two law officers, she had confided,while in custody, that she had pointed the gun at Sabich and said, "Bang! Bang!" before it went off.

In order for the jury to convict on a charge of reckless manslaughter, it has to be satisfied that the accused exhibited a "conscious disregard" of a "substantial risk" that their action could have resulted in death. The maximum custodial sentence is ten years.

The trial of Claudine Longet was attended by press from all over the world. Coincidentally, the most perceptive and elegant account appeared not in the Times, Le Monde or the Washington Post, but came from the pen of a brilliant young correspondent called David Chamberlain, working for the Aspen Times. In the days before the scandal, Chamberlain and his colleagues had been writing pieces with headlines including, "Sculptor Acquitted Of Dog Poisonings: 'Strychnine' Was Actually Milk Powder" and "Feline Birth Control Soon Available".

Never mind observing world celebrities; for Chamberlain (now a distinguished Chicago based writer) you feel it must have been a relief to be working on a story involving bipeds.

The trial of the former star of The Party revealed procedural oversights by the local justice department worthy of another famous figure from Blake Edwards' oeuvre, Inspector Clouseau. The evidence in her diary would be ruled inadmissible because it had been seized without the correct warrant; the journal is believed to have contained lively and direct passages describing her intimate life, and one senior official is thought to have taken it home to scrutinise in detail.

Her blood test for alcohol and other substances was administered without regard for due process. The prosecution claimed that the sample contained cocaine, but this affirmation could not be used in evidence. On the day of the shooting, Longet had been drinking in a fashionable bar in Aspen, a town, then as now, renowned for its relaxed attitude to other stimulants. The firearm - a shoddy imitation of a German Luger, purchased by Sabich's father in Grenoble - was mishandled by the authorities after being collected as evidence.

The head of security at Starwood, who affirmed that he had seen Longet twice on the day of the shooting, said that he warned the sheriff's lieutenant, William Baldridge, with the words: "Watch it.

This gal is a little ringy today."

When it came to selecting a jury, one friend of Sabich told me that "people were queuing up to volunteer. They couldn't wait to spill their guts."

It is hard to overstate the popularity of Vladimir Peter Sabich Jr. While David Chappellet, Robert Redford's less than sympathetic character in Downhill Racer, shared some of his qualities, notably great courage and physical attraction, Chappellet has none of Sabich's kindness, playful humour and what one friend called a "wandering eye for fun". (By some bizarre coincidence, there's a scene in that film where Redford becomes instantly besotted with a moody European brunette whom he meets in a restaurant. The music in the background is Andy Williams' signature tune, "Moon River".)

Many potential jurors were excluded because they clearly believed Longet to be guilty. The mayor of Aspen asked not to be considered for trial duty, so sceptical was he of Longet's innocence. One juror was excused on the grounds that he had once asked Sabich to judge a wet T-shirt competition, an invitation the skier declined. "When they heard this," Chamberlain wrote, "members of the British press, previously somnolent, became suddenly conscientious."

Longet was publicly charged on 8 April 1976 at Pitkin County Court, a small building down the street from the town's famous Jerome Hotel, accompanied by Williams. She claimed Sabich's death was a tragic accident that occurred while he was showing her how to use the .22. Weedman, Longet's defence attorney, dismissed the evidence against her as "circumstantial".

Longet took the stand again when the trial proper began in January 1977. Prosecution ballistics expert Robert Nicoletti explained to the presiding judge, George Lohr, that the weapon had been fired from a distance of four to six feet. "The moustachioed Nicoletti," Chamberlain wrote, "appeared wearing a highvisibility leisure suit that lent him the aspect of the kind of night-club singer who precedes the headlining stripper."

Longet testified that Sabich was standing in the bathroom and that she had said to him, "I would like you to tell me more about the gun and what the safety means," just before the weapon discharged. At which point, she said, Sabich fell and "called my name three times" before lapsing into unconsciousness.

According to the prosecution, the position of the body - prone, and facing away from the weapon - and the distance from which the shot was fired rendered implausible her story that Sabich had been conducting an impromptu bathroom tutorial on firearm safety.

Longet's former husband, Andy Williams, took the stand.

On his way in he quipped to one of the court artists that he should take care to "make it [Williams' likeness] good".

Chamberlain noted that the singer's "easy glibness" was combined with "a touch of testiness and sarcasm".

Radically differing accounts of Longet's character went to the heart of the case. Deputy DA Ashley Anderson, prosecuting, revealed that one Peter Greene, a neighbour of Sabich and Longet's, had declared that Williams informed him, the morning after the shooting, that Claudine was "a crazy type of gal that liked to ski fast, drive fast and take chances".

Williams denied the remark.

The co-defence attorney, Weedman, then asked Greene if Longet was part of the Starwood car pool, which ferried both families' children to school. "She was - in the beginning," Greene replied. "But we got very concerned... about the safety of my kids in her car." Mrs Greene described Longet, more succinctly, as "a crazy chick".

In court transcripts, Weedman, who was no stranger to the use of euphemisms, repeatedly refers to Sabich's death as his "passing", as in the phrase, "causing the gun to be fired which resulted in Mr S's passing". He began by referring to the accused as "Mrs Williams", then later as "Miss Longet" and frequently just "Claudine". "Did you jokingly point the gun and go, 'Bang, bang'?" Anderson asked the woman who once recorded an album called Cuddle Up With Claudine Longet. "I wouldn't joke with guns," replied the singer, who asserted that the weapon had been lying flat in her palm and was not deliberatelypointed in Sabich's direction. Deputy DA Anderson reminded her that two law enforcement officers had sworn that Longet said exactly those words. Untrue, she insisted.

The defence claimed that the gun had been fired from closer range and that its safety catch was defective. Ballistics expert Lama Martin claimed the pistol could have been fired without the trigger being pulled, through faulty construction, tampering and/or oil seepage. "Is it not a fact," Anderson asked Martin, "that [in forensic tests] you could not get the gun to fire except by pulling the trigger?" Martin, "looking somewhat horrified", according to one court reporter, agreed.

There was one aspect of the trial that both Longet's enemies and supporters could agree upon: the chronic mismatch of the legal teams.

Deputy DA Anderson showed up wearing jeans and, according to Chamberlain "lolled in his chair, making only the smallest of efforts to rise to his feet when required to do so". The behaviour of defence attorney co-counsel Weedman, Chamberlain added, "was positively Confucian in its attention to the nuances of courtroom protocol".

Anderson's closing argument lasted for 22 minutes. Weedman spoke for an hour and a half, quoting the poetry of John Donne and insinuating that the 29-year-old Anderson was an immature hothead.

He suggested the weapon was "just a step up from a BB [air pellet] gun" and that Longet "never believed that this tiny little bullet could hurt anybody". "This is not an inanimate object over here," Weedman declared. "This is a woman who is living, breathing and suffering. Mentally," he instructed the jurors, "hold her hand. And ask yourselves:

'Guilty? Or not guilty?'"

While the jury deliberated, Anderson was drinking beer with journalists in the bar at the Jerome Hotel and saying ("repeatedly" according to a fellow patron), "I think they'll walk [acquit] her.

They thought I was a dumb tuna." His instincts proved to be correct.

Judge Lohr informed the jury that it had the option of finding Longet guilty of criminally negligent homicide. This was a misdemeanour that had a maximum sentence of two years and a $5,000 fine. A guilty verdict demanded merely that the accused be demonstrated to have shown a "gross deviation from the standard of caution that a 'reasonable person' could be expected to exercise".

After the trial, one juror told a reporter that, after the first show of hands, they were split: four pronounced her guilty of the more serious charge of reckless manslaughter, four voted for acquittal and four were undecided.

When the verdict was finally returned, they declared Longet guilty, but on the less serious charge of negligent homicide.

Sentencing her to 30 days, Judge Lohr told Longet she could serve the time whenever she liked as long as it was before 1 September. When the verdict was announced, Chamberlain wrote, "Ron Austin bends to the task of comforting Longet, who does not appear unduly distressed." Austin remarked, "I do not think the average person would even have been charged in this case."

Not everybody in Aspen shared his view.

Marty Stouffer, a film-maker, was jailed for a day for failure to appear as a potential juror (because he considered the trial to be "a circus"). "If that bitch gets off with 30 days," Stouffer remarked, "I should get five minutes."

The world's press moved on, but the seismic shock of the Longet affair impacted on Aspen in a number of ways.

Shortly before Longet entered Pitkin County Jail on 18 April 1977, federal consultants had declared it the worst they had ever seen anywhere in America. Longet was allowed to repaint her cell (which she found drab and uninspiring) in lively primary colours.

Otherwise, prisoner C1590 had no unusual privileges. The sheriff, Dick Kienast, dismissed stories that food was brought in from expensive restaurants (rumours still widely believed in Aspen) as "total fabrication".

Bob Braudis, who was taking care of Longet, would go on to become the most famous sheriff in America, and not simply because of his friendship with Hunter S Thompson and his sceptical attitude to the wisdom of criminalising drug users. The Longet case had a profound effect on Braudis, who saw it as highlighting two areas of failure in law enforcement that, once he was elected sheriff in 1986, he began to address with some vigour: the chronic lack of professionalism demonstrated by certain investigating officers and the demeaning conditions endured by prisoners in the county jail.

Braudis, who would remain in office for 25 years, proved so successful that he was summoned as a US government adviser on police recruitment in Iraq. He transformed Aspen to the point that, in the comedy series Reno 911!, oppressed sheriff's deputies obsessively fantasise about being transferred to work for him.

Among his first priorities, Braudis told me, had been to purge the department of complacency and lack of rigour when dealing with crime-scene investigations. He was also determined to remove any suspicion that the wealthy and the famous might be accorded special treatment. "I wanted to eliminate that idea of them and us,"

Braudis told me. "If an alien landed and asked what commodity I provided as sheriff, I would answer, 'Safety.'" And that, he added, meant safety for every resident, whatever their means.

Braudis had had no reservations about allowing Longet to paint her cell. Complaints about the state of the prison, he says, were entirely justified, and one of the first issues he addressed with urgency. "I rebuilt the jail," he told me. "I designed and staffed it in such a way that, if your mother had to spend 90 days here, she could do so in safety. Every institution I visited when I was redesigning the jail had steel furniture. I picked wooden beds and tables, just like I have at home. My critics said that inmates would carve initials into it, and build bonfires. In 25 years, that never happened."

Braudis' legacy lives on through his successor, Joe DiSalvo, who replaced him on his retirement in 2011.

Some were surprised that Longet and Austin - a couple who, despite her proven innocence of intent, were brought together by a man's death - should have continued to live in Aspen. Speaking on the A&E channel's Andy Williams Biography documentary, Longet observed that, "To this day people stop me in the street and say how much they loved the Christmas show."

Not everybody was so supportive. Carol Fuller, a former friend of Sabich, appeared in court shortly after Longet's release, accused of having filled the latter's car with manure and poured wood stain over the paintwork. "For years," another friend of Sabich told me, "she used to avoid going to the old haunts in Aspen. There were stories of waitresses spilling drinks in her lap." Another told me there were quite a few restaurants where "I wouldn't have liked the idea of tasting her soup."

The Sabich affair, in the opinion of Williams, "got really out of hand. It became an international thing. It was in the news all the time. It was an accident. I believe it was an accident. The jury," he said, "believed it was an accident."

A $780,000 civil suit against Longet, brought by Sabich's parents, never got to court. The singer - who was at one point said to be working on a book - reportedly undertook, as a proviso, never to speak publicly on the Sabich affair. Her supposedly incendiary journal was returned to her following her release and she is believed to have burnt it.

People still miss Sabich in Aspen. His friend Bob Beattie, former coach of the American ski team, still lives there. "Spider was a bit of a wild man in those days," Beattie recalled. "I was his educator as well as his coach. I loved every minute of it. He never ever let fame go to his head. He could talk to anyone from anywhere in the world. And did." Beattie believes that, while some people consider Sabich's death to have been a crime of passion, Longet was attempting to frighten her lover, with catastrophic but unintended consequences.

While public sympathy in Aspen naturally resides with Sabich, you can't help wondering, looking up at her house on Red Mountain, what Longet must have suffered in the wake of that tragic afternoon. "I went through a very painful and difficult time," she once complained, "in 1976."

It's impossible to know, given her silence for the past 45 years, just how appropriate the simple past tense she employed in that last remark really is. Who knows what she has continued to suffer in terms of guilt and regret?

Longet could, with the right collaborators and a little luck, have developed a career whose prominence and longevity might have rivalled that of Jane Birkin or France Gall. As it is, her professional activities have been restricted to the very occasional compilation album. She has not performed publicly since the tragedy. Her 70th birthday, in January 2012, passed with no public acknowledgment. Does she sometimes, sitting alone in her mountain paradise, wonder what she might otherwise have achieved in three decades as a solo artist? Does she ask herself what other records she might have made? The kind of song, possibly, whose title would have become inextricably associated with her for all time, just like Andy Williams with "Moon River", which was played incessantly on American radio following his death last September.

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Listening to her own back catalogue, it's hard to see what song the music stations will choose when it finally comes time to select a farewell tribute to evoke the life and career of Claudine Longet.

If she had to find a single track that might evoke both the tragic events of 1976 and her subsequent disappearance from public life, she might do worse than a number from her 1972 album, Let's Spend The Night Together: Leonard Cohen's sombre anthem